Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Swann's Way - by Marcel Proust

Awhile back I blogged on Remembrance of Things Past. There were some problems with Amazon's listing of Proust's books. For example, the new Lydia Davis translation for Penguin was not identified on Amazon US, although I did locate the book. She has now been correctly credited and they put up the correct book cover. The price is outrageous and as Amazon has been doing on Amazon UK with prices over a certain amount,there is a notation that the publisher set the price.

I also took Amazon US to task for not listing Volume 1: Swann's Way of the Kilmartin\Enright\Moncrief translation. (The series is titled In Search of Lost Time.) It is now on Amazon US. So although this is not a free or inexpensive edition, I wanted to call it to your attention. If you are re-reading Proust, you may well want to read this translation.

The paperback set of the whole series is about $60.00, not much more than the set for Kindle! Of course I prefer the Kindle "volumes," but I think they should be far less than the paperback versions.

I corrected these errors by using the links in the FEEDBACK dialog box that is near the bottom of every page on Amazon. It is nice to know they listen!

So I am sorry not to be listing the free books here, for US or UK, but you can find them on the original blog I did on Proust.

Here is a little taste, not of Proust's petites madeleines, but his humor and his sentence construction!

"In the next room I could hear my aunt talking quietly to herself. She never spoke save in low tones, because she believed that there was something broken in her head and floating loose there, which she might displace by talking too loud; but she never remained for long, even when alone, without saying something, because she believed that it was good for her throat, and that by keeping the blood there in circulation it would make less frequent the chokings and other pains to which she was liable; besides, in the life of complete inertia which she led she attached to the least of her sensations an extraordinary importance, endowed them with a Protean ubiquity which made it difficult for her to keep them secret, and, failing a confidant to whom she might communicate them, she used to promulgate them to herself in an unceasing monologue which was her sole form of activity."

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About Me

I am a Hoosier who spent many years in Chicago and am now in San Antonio. My passion is reuniting lost dogs with their families. I am the Director of the Facebook page, Lost Dogs of Texas and a co-founder of "Lost Dog Awareness Day."

I am not new to reuniting families. After Katrina, I helped people in evacuee shelters in San Antonio to track their missing family members. After that work ended, I started a volunteer group that reunited over 1500 Katrina animals with their families by deciphering information online and tracing evacuees.

I am writing a book about two stolen Yorkies who were found after an amazing eighteeen month search. It is tentatively titled "Finding Baxter and Cooper: A Woman, a Private Investigator and their Successful Search for Two Stolen Dogs."